Biography of Horace E. Potter, M. D.

Horace E. Potter, M. D., had been located at Clifton for over thirty years, and besides his successful associations with the profession is a man of high standing and wide repute for his active relations with community affairs.

Doctor Potter came to Kansas on his graduation from medical college. He was born in Henry County, Illinois, December 25, 1858. His ancestry is Scotch and his forefathers came from Scotland to Connecticut in colonial times. His father, Loren E. Potter, was also a physician. He was born at Potter’s Corners near Buffalo in Erie County, New York, in 1822. When he was twelve years of age his parents moved from Erie County to the Ohio Western Reserve and he grew up and married in Northeastern Ohio. Three of his children were born near Ashtabula. While in Ohio he studied medicine with Dr. Horace Eton, beginning practice in that state, moving from there to Henry County, Illinois, and soon after the Civil war moving to Marshall County, Iowa, where he practiced thirty years. During part of this time he had his home on a farm, but the last fifteen years of his life were spent at Algona, Iowa, where he died in December, 1897. As was true of most of the good Americans living in the Western Reserve, he was strongly identified with the abolotionist cause before the war and subsequently was an equally ardent republican. His church was the Presbyterian. Dr. L. E. Potter married Thankful Rickard. She was born near Ashtabula, Ohio, in 1822 and died at Algona, Iowa, in 1902. Of their four living children Horace E. is the youngest. Orange A., the oldest, was a soldier in the Union army during the Civil war and is now a farmer in North Dakota. Albert C. is also a physician and surgeon and lives at Hutchinson, Kansas. Laurens E. is a farmer at Algona, Iowa, and had served as county auditor of Kossuth County in that state.

Dr. Horace E. Potter was six or seven years of age when his parents moved to Iowa, and he spent part of his youth on a farm in Marshall County. He attended the rural schools, the public schools at Gilman, graduating from high school there in 1879. The next four years he spent as a teacher in Marshall County and while teaching he took up the study of medicine. Doctor Potter graduated from the St. Louis Medical College in 1885 with the degree M. D. and subsequently specialized in diseases of the eye in the Chicago Homeopathic College. Doctor Potter located at Clifton, Kansas, in 1885 and through the subsequent years had borne with credit and efficiency the inereasing burdens of a large general and aurgieal practice. Doctor Potter had his offices on Parallel Street and his residence is on Bartlett Avenue. He also owned a farm of 108 acres in Clay County.

Doctor Potter had voted the republican ticket since 1880, when he supported Garfield and Arthur. He had served as coroner of Clay County and when the Clay County High School Board was organized he was appointed one of its first directors and served the second year by election. He is a member in good standing of the County and State Medical Societies and the American Medical Association. Doctor Potter had long been an enthusiastie fraternity man. He is past master of Clifton Lodge No. 122, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and also belongs to Topeka Consistory No. 1 of the Scottish Rite. He is past noble grand of Clifton Lodge No. 81, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and for over twenty years had sat in the Grand Lodge and is now chairman of the Committee on Legislation. He is past master workman and past grand representative of Clifton Lodge No. 40, Ancient Order of United Workmen, and is also a member of Clifton Council No. 70 of the Knights and Ladies of Security.

In 1887, at Greenleaf, Kansas, Doctor Potter married Miss Iza E. Ware, daughter of I. C. and Mary (Gallion) Ware, the latter now deceased. Her father served in the Union army, and is a civil engineer and retired farmer now living at Clifton. Doctor and Mrs. Potter have one son and one daughter. Rayburn, the older, is a graduate of the Clifton High School, spent one year in Washburn College and one year in the State Agricultural College at Manhattan, and is now in the Engineering Corps of the United States Army at a camp in Texas. The daughter Mary is a graduate of the Olifton High School, continued her studies in the State Agricultural College and is now preparing for work as a nuree in St. Francis Hospital at Topeka.